Jimquisition: Previewed, Preordered, Prescrewed

Bujiraso

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Feb 12, 2011
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I'm just gonna throw out a pro-tip that probably half of you don't need to hear:
If this game being garbage, or any other failed promise in the industry, bothers you... Then remember that.
Remember not to trust media or the people who make it. At all.
You don't buy an orange hidden under the counter, you get to pick it up, check its color, and see if it has an appropriate firmness.
The media industries are the only ones that demand cash for something you know nothing about other than the things they tell you -- they, the ones who need to profit off of it.
 

Colt47

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Oct 31, 2012
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I read in one of the news posts of Randy Pitchfords reply to Jim. Honestly, given the reactions I've seen from just about everyone who was a fan of the Aliens franchise, Jim was pretty justified putting up this episode. The best opinions I've seen of the game have been people claiming the game is so bad it is good thanks to the silliness of the AI, which is bringing back some rather interesting Childhood memories of Privateer 2 the Darkening.
 

Zeles

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Oct 3, 2009
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Hmmm. How do we know whether or not to trust the devs? Because I don't think that whats being said here is to NEVER preorder a game, but how are we supposed to know if we can trust what we're being shown?

I've preordered KH3D, and wasn't disappointed. I'm considering preordering Bioshock Infinite, despite having never gotten a game from it's devs before.

So how can we tell if the makers of the products are trustworthy?
 

Treblaine

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Jul 25, 2008
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Imperator_DK said:
Ever better graphical production values don't come cheap
I'm going to have to challenge this idea considering graphical quality has hardly been increasing exponentially, and tools to use them are becoming cheaper and of increased productivity.

I mean have you seen the amount of content in Steam's various Workshops? That's made by complete amateurs in their free time. The assets are easier to make and easier to outsource. In the past trying to make a 3D object and animate it was a nightmare, now it's at a level open to anyone.

Cheap and widespread engine licensing means those assets made can more easily be brought together.

What is getting more expensive are things like marketing. I mean mass effect being advertised during the superbowl half-time? That's INSANELY expensive.

Publishers are playing crazy games with money, the simple expenditures in development match well with returns from business, especially over the long tail of sales if there is a long tail, such as with games sold on services with continuous discounting and price cuts such as Gog or Steam.
 

irishda

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chiefohara said:
irishda said:
You are on the ball with a lot of what you are saying, but the movie trailer anaolgy isn't really fair.

You watch a movie trailer, you know all that footage is going to be in the movie. The A:CM trailer showed a lot of stuff that wasn't in the game. Thats where the main fault is.
Unless the footage is from a deleted scene
 

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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Not an issue for me, I rarely buy games less than a year after they come out. I finally bought Bioshock a week ago.
 

solemnwar

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Thus far I have pre-ordered:

-Dragon Age II
-Fable 3
-Dead Space 2
-Dishonored
-Mass Effect 3
-Dead Space 3
-Assassin's Creed: Revelations
-Assassin's Creed 3
-Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Not one of these games have made me lament my purhcase. I don't like some of them as much as I hoped I would, but I have yet to be dissappointed with a game that I made a pre-order on. I tend to pre-order games from series or publishers that I have consistently gotten good games from, though. Actually the games I've hated have been the ones I've picked out of bargain bins at EB Games. If they weren't on sale for like, $10 I wouldn't have bothered with them. There's some games you just KNOW are going to be bad looking at them...
 

MorphingDragon

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AyaReiko said:
Like I said, I know it won't happen, but name me one other industry other than the video game industry that's developed such an immense and callous disregard for its customers.
All American based industries hate their customers, especially foreign ones. No to mention that the Music and Movie industries are more politically corrupt than the Games industry.
 

chiefohara

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irishda said:
chiefohara said:
irishda said:
You are on the ball with a lot of what you are saying, but the movie trailer anaolgy isn't really fair.

You watch a movie trailer, you know all that footage is going to be in the movie. The A:CM trailer showed a lot of stuff that wasn't in the game. Thats where the main fault is.
Unless the footage is from a deleted scene
Deleted scene still comes on the dvd.

Also pretty big price difference between a 10 euro movie/dvd and a 60 Euro game.

So yeah... still not a fair analogy
 

JohnnyDelRay

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Only thing I've ever preordered is the Witcher 2. Because DLC was promised free, and DRM free really floats my boat. Other than that, I'm happy to wait and see what the game's going to turn out like before I shell out cash. Usually wait until the price comes down a bit as well, season pass and DLC are bullshit. I still prefer the days of working demos and shareware, that was awesome.
 

Tropicaz

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Aug 7, 2012
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irishda said:
chiefohara said:
irishda said:
You are on the ball with a lot of what you are saying, but the movie trailer anaolgy isn't really fair.

You watch a movie trailer, you know all that footage is going to be in the movie. The A:CM trailer showed a lot of stuff that wasn't in the game. Thats where the main fault is.
Unless the footage is from a deleted scene
But with A:CM It's like the trailer for the movie was showing a great, tense film with Morgan Freeman and Joseph Gordon Levitt, directed by Christopher Nolan. And then when you go to see the film it's actually starring Tyler Perry and Hayden Christensen, and is directed by Michael Bay. What that trailer showed was nothing of what you got in the game
 

Lord_Jaroh

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Apr 24, 2007
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Aardvaarkman said:
Lord_Jaroh said:
What's funny about all of those things is that if you are not happy with the final "product" you can take your product back for a refund...

Kickstarter is less like a pre-order and more of an investment, however.
You can get a refund on games you are not happy with... since when wasn't this the case? How is this different from the food situation?

Kickstarter is not an investment. You aren't buying shares in the company. You don't get any royalties or dividends if the project succeeds. I really don't understand what you're trying to say here, because it is doesn't match reality.
"Investment" does not have to equal monetary return. I am giving them money and in return, I will get a game from it, provided everything works out.

As well, if I purchase a shitty game, let's say Final Fantasy XIII, and I play through it and decide that I do not like this thing, trying to return it to Gamestop or wherever, they will look at me like I am inebriated and offer to purchase that used game off me...
 

PirateRose

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Aug 13, 2008
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Games I'm generally interested and excited about these days, I refuse to preorder now, thanks to Fable 3, Mass Effect 3, and Aliens which I ironically didn't preorder, I was just happy to hear I saved myself $60. Remember Me looks real good despite some goofiness, it reminds me of Oni which I loved as a kid. But I'm waiting for the reviews to come out the day after the game releases, I'm waiting to hear both critics and consumer/fan reaction. I can't afford to spend $60 on something that isn't going to entertainment when I can buy something $10 from two or three years ago. Yeah I probably already played it, but I know it's good.

No matter what cool things they put with the preorder and the special editions, for example the Tomb Raider special edition is looking awesome, but I've got a real strong feeling that game is going to fail, and fail hard. Stronger than the newbie Remember Me. Sorry, it doesn't settle well with me, a long time Tomb Raider fan, to hear multiple dudes working on this game and dudes advertising this game say things like, "men can't relate to women" and "we designed the game so men can feel like they are holding her hand and protecting her" and "she's in a situation where she might get raped!" The pictures and video look pretty for this game, but ever since those guys opened their mouths and the Lara started moaning and crying, I've been very judgmental.

And don't give me the whole, her behavior is realistic, they should do this with all heroes bs. That's the problem, people are open to accepting a woman behaving weak because that's been the norm in stories for a very long time. It would be revolutionary if they took a male character and put him in a weaken position, instead of letting him get old they should cut him back several years to fresh teens/early twenties. Make him where he's legit scared, screaming and crying for help, saying he doesn't think he's capable of doing something, and possibly under threat of rape. They wouldn't dare make such a game, because people believe it wouldn't seem realistic of a young man to behave that way, it takes away power fantasy play from the male player and they would call him too whiny and not touch the game.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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irishda said:
chiefohara said:
irishda said:
You are on the ball with a lot of what you are saying, but the movie trailer anaolgy isn't really fair.

You watch a movie trailer, you know all that footage is going to be in the movie. The A:CM trailer showed a lot of stuff that wasn't in the game. Thats where the main fault is.
Unless the footage is from a deleted scene
Well it also shows a much higher quality of graphics and technology. Going into the code Aliens: CM apparently doesn't even support graphics cards newer than 5 years ago. Backround details like the alien twitching in a tank, and other things are missing, and while a lot of the same sequences exist, they have the cool bits like placing turrets and so on removed... combined with the aliens being unable to do a lot of the things (like wiggle through tight spaces and such) that were shown during the demo. It's not just missing scenes, but a whole level of quality and polish. We know what they promised was possible, they showed it to us, but they didn't deliver it.

It's sort of like going to see a movie trailer, and then finding out they couldn't afford the actors or FX for anything more than making the trailer, so they decided to do the entire movie with animated stick figures and family members of the producer filling in the voices.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Atmos Duality said:
*chuckles*
So basically...Marketing is dishonest?
Yeah no shit, Jim.
Well the point is more than we shouldn't tolerate it anymore, since it's crossed a line it shouldn't have and done it enough to become a problem, rather than a shock about what it's doing per se.

Jim was sort of covering this in pointing out the outrageous lies by people like Peter Molyneux, and how we let it go, leading to things like what we're seeing with Aliens: CM.

Basically we need to start holding developers and publishers responsible for what the marketing people do. What's more in cases like Aliens: CM it's showing the developers being complicit with the marketing deceptions, something that has long been suspected, especially seeing as devs just luv to say "it wasn't us, it was marketing, blame them!". Of course we also saw the same thing with ME3 where the game developers and their statements were used for marketing and it turned out that they were lying, and what's more even released a documentary as an app admitting that the devs knew they were lying.

We shouldn't just sit back and accept this as being "the way things are" and letting people keep lying to us. One way of dealing with that is to stop pre-ordering games.
 

Blade_125

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Sep 1, 2011
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It is a rare game indeed that deserves to be bought at full pop. I don't understand why more people don't wait 3-4 months and get the game for at least $20, or more if it is a steam sale.

Be smart and save yourself some money.